CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
English
as an international language has an important role to develop science
and technologies many countries in the world use English as a medium of
communication among people in different countries, and also of writing
many kinds of books in which those are spread in different countries. In
Indonesia there are many kinds of foreign books
written in English, whether they are medical, Economical, Botanical, or
other books, they claim Indonesian students to be able to learn and to
use English in schools or in society in order that the books they read
can be applied in various fields so that the development of science and
technologies in Indonesia can be obtained.
For many years, English
has been the most important foreign language in Indonesia, Which is
taught from elementary school to university. However, in senior high
school, English is taught as main subject in which the government has
changed the curriculum into Curriculum Based on Competence 2004.
According to Departemen Pendidikan Nasional (2003: 36).
“The
competence-basing language curriculum is a systematic draft and strategy
which build the communicative competence or the competence of
contextual. It means that it builds all the basis of competences
themselves. They are like linguistics competences, social culture and
strategies to make the benefit context.”
From the statement
above, it is clear that Curriculum Based on competence 2004 tries to
develop and achieve the communicative competence or discourse competence
and has perspective that is comprehensive to the discourse. The
learners must be able to master the four skills, they are: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing, also English components such as:
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
Among the four skills above,
writing is the most difficult one. Because it requires demonstrating
the control of a number of variables simultaneously; they are control of
content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation spelling,
etc. Nunan (1989: 35) points out, “It has been argued that that learning
to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro
skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in
question is first, second, or foreign language.” Another opinion comes
from Heaton (1989: 138). He explain that the writing skills are complex
and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of
grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgment
elements. It means that ability to write needs a special skill and
process in organizing language material by using learners’ own words and
ideas and to be a good composition.
According to the results of the
research done by the students of IKIP Budi Utomo Malang show that in
learning English, most of the students find difficulties, especially in
applying grammar in their speaking and writing. So, they will make
mistakes and errors. It describes that learners’ ability in English is
still poor and they need to be taught more effectively.
The learners
often make mistakes and even errors in learning English, especially when
they try to arrange sentences or use tenses in their writing. As a
result, they will write sentences ungrammatically. Actually,
ungrammatical sentences have great influence when the learners are
writing sentences. That can be influenced by the first language which is
different from the second language in written form. Therefore, the
first language can interfere learners in the process of the second
language. Abbort (1981: 216) wrote,
“For pedagogic purposes, teachers
and others more likely to be concerned with the performances of whole
groups and especially with the problems they have in commons. For these
purposes, we need to ensure that the data comes from fairly homogeneous
groups as regards mother tongue, age, previous teaching, and if
possible, intelligence. Perhaps the most important of these factors is
the mother tongue, particularly if phonological errors arte being
studied
From the statement above, it can be seen that errors in
learning a second language are caused by the interference of the
learners’ mother tongue. In other words, errors made by the learners
sometimes are caused by use of the first language.
Making Errors are a
natural and unavoidable part of the process of learning English. Many
kinds of errors arise when the learners write because they do not master
the English structure well. Also, errors are the inability of the
students in using rules of the components and elements of the second
language. Brown (1987: 170) Said that ”second language learning is a
process that is clearly not unlike first language learning in its trial
and errors nature”. It means that the learners cannot avoid errors in
learning second language. That statement is supported by Wiganti (2000:
11)
“Many linguist and researcher have found out that learners’
errors may account the process of learning a target language, in other
words, making errors is considered to be natural to the learners. More
extremely, they hypothesize that errors should not be viewed as problems
to be overcome, but rather as normal and inevitable features indicating
the strategies that learners use.”
So almost all learners must
make errors when they are learning English because it is difficult to
separate error in the process of learning English.
Students’ errors
are very useful ways of showing what they have and have not learnt.
Dubin F. and Olshtain E. (1986: 74) reported,: … , today errors are
viewed as an integral part of the language-learning process from which
we can gain very significant insight.” It tells that errors are
important to study in order to understand the process of learning. A
study of learners’ errors describes what problems the learners are
having now and help the teacher to plan remedial work. In addition, the
teacher should not see negatively as a sign of failure but see them
positively as an indication of what the teacher still needs to teach.
So, if the teacher tries to prevent students; errors, he/she never finds
out what they do not know.
There are four standard competences in
curriculum based on competences in Curriculum Based on Competence 2004.
One of them is writing. In writing students are hoped to be able to
express many written meanings that have purposes in communicative, text
structure etc. They can develop their writing in the forms of genre
(kinds of text) such as: narrative, descriptive, recount, news items,
etc as a means of communications.
One of genres is recount. Recount
tells something happening in the past time, like: history, journey,
autobiography, biography, diary, personal letter, etc. As it tells some
events, it usually uses sequence words such as: When, while, after,
before, until, etc. Then, tense used in recount text is simple past
tense, because it tells past events.
To make a good composition, the
students must be able to master and apply the structure correctly,
especially about tense used. In this case, the tense used is simple past
tense. If they cannot do that, of course, errors will arise.
Automatically their writing will cause misunderstanding for the readers,
because the readers cannot receive the massage or expression of their
idea well. Most of the students still find problems in using it, because
of their limited mastery, especially the differences between regular
and irregular verb. Therefore the writer wants to analyze the errors
made by the students and tries to give solutions to overcome their
problems. He chooses the title “An Error Analysis on the Use of Simple
Past Tense among the Ninth Year Students of SMPN 3 Pare.”
1.2. Statement of the problems
Based
on the background of the study there are problems, which can be
formulated after identifying the type errors, omitted among the ninth
year students of SMPN 3 Pare
The problem can be stated as follows:
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